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Nandina domestica
24 Novermber 2010
Not a flower, I know. So Plant of the Week.
I grew this Nandina domestica from seed from a plant in the botanic garden at Kobe, the port on the south coast of Honshu not far from Kyoto and Osaka. The mother plant, unusually, had cream berries instead of the usual red, and to my eye rather paler leaves. I love Nandina (in Japanese Nanten) partly for its bamboo-like grace, but also for its associations. In Japan it seems to be a symbol of hospitality, like the salt they sprinkle on (shining wet) doorsteps. You see nanten in pots or in the ground in almost every front yard (and often at the back too). We have one by the front door at Saling.
This particular cream-berried plant, dwarfed by years in its pot, turns a lovely red in autumn - a colour that matches our red hall.
'Heavenly bamboo' is one of its 'common' names, although it is no sort of bamboo at all, but rather an eccentric member of the berberis family with the added virtue of being entirely maintenance-free.
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